The Latest on Expelled

As 2008 drew to a close, the
good news for the producers
of Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed was that their creationist
propaganda movie was getting a
bit of press again. The bad news is
that it was in the lists of the worst
movies of 2008, as well as in a
fierce, detailed, and incisive review
by the popular film critic Roger
Ebert.

EXPELLED IN "WORST-OF" LISTS

The Onion's AV Club (2008 Dec
16), was quickest out of the gate,
commenting:

There are terrible movies,
and then there are terrible
movies that cause harm to
society by feeding into its
ignorance. Nathan Frankowski's odious antievolution
documentary belongs in the latter category.
... Few moments in cinema
in 2008 were as shameless
and disgusting as the
Expelled sequence where
Stein solemnly visits a Nazi
death camp and unsubtly
links "survival of the fittest"
theory to the Holocaust.

John Serba of the Grand Rapids
Press (2008 Dec 26) wrote, "Ben
Stein hosts this pro-Intelligent
Design documentary that forgets
to include a compelling argument
for this viewpoint, and instead
chooses to equate Darwinism and
its legions of rational scientist followers
with Nazis and the
Holocaust. Facts rooted in reality
are at a premium in this insidious,
crassly manipulative dreck." Roger
Moore of the Orlando Sentinel
(2008 Dec 26) commented, "Ben
Stein's documentary was a cynical
attempt to sucker Christian conservatives
into thinking they're losing
the 'intelligent design' debate
because of academic 'prejudice.'"

Stephen Whitty of the
Newark Star-Ledger (2008 Dec
27) described Expelled as lifting "its nonsensical knowledge
of early man from an Alley Oop
comic and its sense of honest
inquiry from a snake-handling
preacher." In the LA City Beat
(2008 Dec 30), Andy Klein
wrote:

Stein's "intelligent design"
documentary has all the red
flags — inadequate or misleading
identification of
interviewees, aggressively
manipulative editing, extraordinary
claims without extraordinary
evidence, and
extreme leaps of logic ... particularly
suggesting guilt by
association, even to he point
of laying blame for the
Holocaust on Darwin.

And Ken Hanke of the Ashville,
North Carolina, Mountain Xpress (2008 Dec 31) said that Expelled
was "as corrupt a piece of work as
you'll ever encounter."

Expelled fared no better north
of the border. Jay Stone of the
Canwest News Service (2008 Dec
26) described Expelled as "a masterwork
of intellectual dishonesty."
And Richard Crouse of Canada AM (2008 Dec 30) commented:

Wrapping his thesis in good
old American jingoistic
rhetoric — remember this
guy used to write speeches
for Nixon — Stein repeatedly
compares Darwinist scientists
to communists ... and
even makes the outrageous
connection between
Darwin's theory and Nazism.

Crouse added, "Perhaps it isn't just
a coincidence that the host's initials
are BS."

ROGER EBERT ON EXPELLED

Roger Ebert reviewed Expelled in a
December 3, 2008, post entitled
"Win Ben Stein's mind" on his blog
on the Chicago Sun-Times website
(available on-line at http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html) — and he pulled no punches. "The more you
know about evolution, or simple
logic, the more you are likely to be
appalled by the film. No one with
an ability for critical thinking
could watch more than three minutes
without becoming aware of
its tactics," he wrote. And he added:

This film is cheerfully ignorant,
manipulative, slanted,
cherry-picks quotations,
draws unwarranted conclusions,
makes outrageous juxtapositions
(Soviet marching
troops representing opponents
of ID), pussy-foots
around religion (not a single
identified believer among
the ID people), segues
between quotes that are not
about the same thing, tells
bald-faced lies, and makes a
completely baseless association
between freedom of
speech and freedom to teach
religion in a university class
that is not about religion.

"And there is worse, much worse,"
Ebert continued, taking special
offense at Expelled's claim that the
acceptance of evolution resulted
in the Holocaust — "It fills me with
contempt." Previously, the
Anti-Defamation League said that the
movie's claim "is outrageous and
trivializes the complex factors that
led to the mass extermination of
European Jewry." Expelled's lead,
Ben Stein, responded, "It's none of
their f—ing business," according to
Peter McKnight, writing in the
Vancouver Sun (2008 Jun 21).

For a thorough critique of
Expelled, including a collection of
links to reviews of the movie, visit
NCSE's Expelled Exposed website. Additionally, a recent issue
of Reports of the NCSE (2008
Sep–Dec; 28 [5–6]) is a special
issue devoted to debunking
Expelled, containing reports on its
reception, a summary of the ways
in which organizations with a
stake in the creationism/evolution
controversy reacted, a summary of
the various controversies over its
use of copyrighted material, and a
detailed explanation of its unsuitability
for the classroom.